Monthly Archives: February 2008

February 11, 2008 · 4:45 pm

Now and Forever: Bill Clinton

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This weekend I was listening to Bill Clinton defending himself with that self-righteous wagging finger so characteristic of Bill assuming the “self-defense” defense. According to Bill, in relation to his pro-Hillary at-any-cost support, he had done and said nothing wrong. He had said things about Obama that were “factually accurate” whereas others had said things that were “factually inaccurate”.

This was a flashback to Bill and his use of language to exculpate his use of other language. What your meaning of “is is”, not having “sexual relations” with “that woman”, smoking but not inhaling are all sad reminders of how a talented politician can waste so much potential as he tangles himself in his own web of slim.

This got me to questioning the 1990s and what I had once perceived as very good years and, despite Clinton’s holier-than-thou liberal condescension, a relatively successful presidency. But when you really concentrate on those years, I think you’ll find that they were definitely not positive for the Democratic Party (of which I am not a member) and for the U.S. in the mid to long term. Continue reading →

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February 10, 2008 · 7:42 pm

Obama’s Contagious Hope, Hillary’s Contagion: Part II

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I know I now sound like a senile broken record, but the saga continues. Each time I run into the “Hillary experience” or “proven track record” arguments, I get nausea. Hillary’s only track record is in the Senate, and her Senate record is very Bush, very hawkish, and very careful in preparations for a presidential bid. Even if we conceded, for the sake of argument, that she was a co-president from 1992-2000 (and don’t care about the constitutional smell-test), playing behind the scenes president doesn’t count because you’re ass isn’t on the line. But all of the voice-finding, shfits in campaign strategy, misinterpreted statements by Billary, and today changing her campaign manager in mid-game, don’t seem like examples of someone who is “ready for day one” or whose track record is proving reliable.

Meanwhile, Obama’s positive messages and excellent results in Washington, Nebraska and Louisiana highlight that Americans just may be better people than the Clintons have calculated. As so, here is another good New York Times by Frank Rich keeping the Billary contagion in perspective: Continue reading →

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February 9, 2008 · 11:48 pm

A Little Change for Grave Error

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Now that Grave Error is turning two years old and in the spirit of “We Can Believe”, I have to decide to change Grave Error’s header. I will be rotating the header between three different banners. Continue reading →

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February 9, 2008 · 11:40 pm

Obama’s Contagious Hope, Hillary’s Contagion

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Yesterday I read a funny piece by a Joel Stein in the L.A. Times explaining how he was actually a little embarrassed by his Obamamania. Sometimes I too watch Obama’s speeches, listen to the crowds chanting “Yes We Can” and think that there is something incredibly innocent and over-the-top about it all. And when I show Obama’s South Carolina speech and explain its importance to my co-workers here in Spain, they just think this confirms their idea of America’s strange cheerleading culture.

But what you have to understand here about Obama’s contagious hope is not that it may be impossible to achieve, but that millions of Americans are coming together with Obama to say that they are fed up with the nation’s politics. And more importantly, they are coming together to say that they want the country to be a better place for all. It is a remarkably powerful message and reflection that our nation is not rotten.

On the other side, I just read this op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Peggy Noonan called, “Can Hillary Lose with Grace” that did a good job of explaining why Hillary is not the person to make this country a better place: Continue reading →

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February 8, 2008 · 10:17 pm

Water for Elephants

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I just finished reading Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen about a young man who loses both of his parents in a car accident and joins the circus in the 1930s. Gruen heavily researched the traveling circuses of the time period to create this fast paced, well written and constructed novel. I very much enjoyed it (it was a page turner), but wouldn’t call it a masterpiece. It reminded me a lot of the movies Big Fish and Friend Green Tomatoes and John Irving’s The Cider House Rules. The most powerful aspect of the story was its disturbing portrayal of the helplessness of the aging process. But other than that, I never really understood the whole purpose of telling a story about the circus — other than thinking that it would be a novel (no pun intended) storyline and for some cheap symbolic effect. Continue reading →

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February 8, 2008 · 9:34 pm

Spanish Presidential Elections: Dumb and Even Dumber

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Make no mistake of it, Spain’s incumbent president, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, probably has the lowest IQ and his cabinet have the lowest combined IQs of any ruling government in Europe. These guys are just dumb, and also naive. They’ve botched almost every foreign policy, economic, and national security decision possible. They have also engaged in activities that have ranged from the utterly incompetent (the AVE bullet train projects) to the offensive (energy company mergers) to the mind-boggling (ETA negotiations). The Ministry of Finance went so far as to blame inflation on the citizens for leaving too big of a tip when ordering coffee (Spaniards never leave more than spare change, by the way), and he told people they should save money by eating rabbit for Christmas dinner. If it weren’t so outright pathetic, it would be laughable.

But never fear, the opposition party, the Partido Popular, led by clueless imbecile Mariano Rajoy and helped by the Spanish Catholic Bishops are making sure that Spain will be ruled for another four years by Zapatero’s PSOE socialist party. Last week, those Catholic Bishops did the democratically responsible thing and actually made a public statement telling Spaniards that as Catholics they were obliged to vote against Zapatero because of his stance on abortion rights and negotiating with terrorists. Last time I checked, Christianity talked about God, not Caesar. It’s more double jeopardy. Bishops should be talking about how we live our lives to stay out of hell, not out of jail.

Then today at lunch while reading the conservative Spanish newspaper El ABC (Marca was already taken), I ran across something incredibly disturbing. Rajoy is proposing legislation to regulate the use of the veil (meaning female Muslims wearing a head garment) in public places and schools. Why? To avoid discrimination against women. Well, this got me going. Spain has the worst income disparity between men and women of any country of Europe. Hey, do you think workplace discrimination in Spain is caused by the 25 Muslim women in the entire country who may wear a cloth on their head?

The ethnocentricism is appalling! Continue reading →

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February 8, 2008 · 11:59 am

The Obama Revolution

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The 2008 Presidential Elections’ headline should simply read, “Obama”. Obama, whether or not he wins the Democratic primaries or the general elections thereafter, has single-handedly defined this election year and transformed it into the most exciting, energizing and most participative one in recent memory.

Notice how Hillary with her claim of superior experience and ready-for-day-one sound bite has been continuously re-locating her own voice to sound more like Obama’s. Even the Republican candidates have each claimed to be the one who would bring an Obama-like change to the White House. I even get the feeling from George Will’s recent columns that he has secretly become an Obama supporter.

Just look at that the numbers and you’ll see that what Obama has done is astonishing. Continue reading →

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February 6, 2008 · 3:05 pm

The Republicans’ Tortuous Destruction of Life

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I am often astonished by how when Republicans talk about the sanctity of human life they are only referring to the sanctity of unborn lives. For example, yesterday I heard a speech by Governor Huckabee saying that he defended the sanctity of human life (meaning he was in favor of prohibiting abortion), the theoretical Second Amendment’s right to bear arms, and hetero-sexual-only marriages.

Why do these God fearing Christianofascists (like most fundamentalist radicals) want to legislate the prohibition of sin in any form and impose some sort of in-this-lifetime and after-this-lifetime double jeorpardy. In this Christianofascist judgment fest, you can first be tried for the sin/crime by a judge and put in prison and then be judged a second time  (for the same action) by God and thrown into hell. Why don’t they just make honest, faithful belief a legal requirement. If the law were to prohibit all sinning, then the Christians would see it get very competitive at the gates to heaven.

But seriously, think about it. How can you be in favor of life and at the same time prohibit restricting gun possession? How can you want to protect life and be in favor of the state taking life? How can you be in favor of life and be so overtly destructive to the environment? And same sex marriage? Who cares? Are you that afraid of your latent homosexuality that you need guns and a death penalty to protect you from gay temptation?

Talk about deathly sickening and synical, the CIA, the Republican president’s CIA, has admitted to using the mideavil torture technique of waterboarding on three occasions since 9/11. As you may know, waterboarding is considered an illegal torture method by the U.S. and the international community. The U.S. has frequently criticized and sited other nations as human rights violators for using the very technique is has been using since 9/11. The U.S. even prosecuted a Japanese military officer for using the practice against Americans during World War II and sentenced him to 15 years of prison. Continue reading →

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February 6, 2008 · 12:19 pm

Super Tuesday, Spin Wednesday

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On Super Tuesday, the campaigners were already preparing for Spin Wednesday, the day after when they spin the results to make it look like they’re in the strategic lead, regardless of what the (Washington Post) diagram above and calendar may say. Continue reading →

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February 5, 2008 · 11:33 pm

There’s Got to Be a Better Way!

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It’s Super Tuesday, and I am not going to know anything until I wake up tomorrow morning (there’s a 9 hour time difference between Madrid and California). I know there’s a Democrats Abroad event tonight in Madrid where people will be following the elections. But you wouldn’t catch me dead labeling myself a Democrat (or a Republican for that matter) or wanting to spend a long evening with a mass of people who did.

By the looks of things, Hillary will win but her lead will have been drastically reduced. It’s hard to measure the reality of things from what the press is saying because the press, like any other business, is trying to sell its “product” by creating suspense and drama and therefore hoping for a long drawn out campaign. Let’s just hope Obama will hold his own, and get important delegates to keep the hope alive. Sure, we can continue to live under the status quo. We can go back to the Clintons and the Bushs, but wouldn’t it be nice to mix it up a little. There’s got to be a better way.

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